


Dancing Lights

by contrequirose



Series: miscellaneous musings (drabbles, ficlets, and other short things) [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, guys xhorhas is so cool this isnt relevant to the fic but matts worldbuilding blows me away, magic!, mild spoilers for episode 64, this is... short.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 02:58:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19033375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contrequirose/pseuds/contrequirose
Summary: They’ve been watching with no incident for forty three minutes when Beauregard whispers, “Caleb?”“Ja?”“What – what was the academy like? Not – you already told me about what happened under Ikithon. But, before that – was it just as bad?”“It was – not as bad as Ikithon, nein. It was nice. Fun, even, if you like learning.”“D’you think – if I had gone there,” and she swallows, “would I have – could I have learned magic?”(short ficlet based on prompt from jas, thanks jas!)





	Dancing Lights

**Author's Note:**

> this is short! but im shoving a bunch of these onto ao3 despite that! enjoy :3

It’s dark.

This far out from the city, he can spot thousands upon thousands of stars, glimmering into swatches of purple as the galaxy’s disc turns around them. He, much to his own chagrin, hadn’t payed much attention to Astronomy classes when he had them. Enough to know about the stars, and other planets, and the churning depths of this plane. Not enough to know much more than that.

They had done away with watches, in the Empire, when they had been sleeping under the relative safety of the dome and his alarm spell. But out here, in the dark – the towering spires of the Barbed fields erupting in intervals around them, the faint light exuding from the magical tar pits that he has yet to fully comprehend, trying to hide from the creatures like the ones that had nearly killed him earlier –

They had decided that taking a watch was a good idea. So it’s four in the morning, and he’s sitting up awake, Frumpkin on his lap and Beauregard pressed again his back as they sit in the center of the dome, sleeping and snoring friends surrounding them, staring at the sky and the darkness.

They’ve been watching with no incident for forty-three minutes when Beauregard whispers, “Caleb?”

“ _Ja_?”

“What – what was the academy like? Not – you already told me about what happened under Ikithon. But, before that – was it just as bad?”

She leans against his back, and he blinks, surprised at the question.

“It was – not as bad as Ikithon, _nein_. It was –“

Books and learning and stars and softness and food and pillows and friends –

“Nice. Fun, even, if you like learning.”

He can feel Beauregard sigh from where she’s pressed up against his back.

“D’you think – if I had gone there,” and she swallows, “would I have – could I have learned magic?”

She continues on before he can answer, voice pressing faster and faster as whispered words tumble out of her throat.

“Like, the Cobalt Soul doesn’t – they don’t really do magic, they teach people how to learn and investigate and how to punch things really well. I’m sure – there are clerics of Ioun out there, and wizards who worship her, but they never – just learned how to punch, you know? Not much else.”

He considers that for a moment, and discards it as the lie it is.

“You know much more about history and arcana than someone just trained to ‘punch things good’, Beauregard.”

She snorts. “I know the bare minimum. Nobody ever wanted to deal with me long enough to teach me more.”

“It’s just – you know, all of you guys – you have magic, or healing, or both, and I just have – I can hit things. I’m magicless in a group doing – being expected to do wondrous things. It’s just – it’s hard.”

He tangles his fingers in Frumpkin’s fur and scans the horizon before answering. “That’s not a bad thing, Beauregard. Magic – magic comes with a price.”

Beauregard sighs, again, and he continues. “But if you want to – to learn? I can teach you something, if you’d like.”

He can feel as she sits up straighter, and her voice perks up. “Wait, like – seriously? I can’t tell if you’re joking, man, your voice always sounds the same.”

“ _Ja_. You could probably work out how to cast dancing lights by the end of watch. It’s fairly simple, for a beginner spell.”

She nods, and he takes a spare bit of wychwood out of his pocket, feeling the familiar whorls in the wood. He passes it to Beauregard.

He spends the next hour coaching her through how to make the finger shapes for the spell, and the incantation in Celestial.

Three minutes before he’s going to wake up Caduceus and Yasha, Beauregard gasps, and he twists his head around from where he had been half asleep to see two unsteady globules of pale blue light, glowing and shimmering in Beauregard’s palm.

She looks at him, eyes wide, and he blinks back at her.

Above them, the stars continue to shine.

 

 

 


End file.
